I'm looking for a new vacuum. Our current one is fighting a losing battle. I'm thinking of getting a Dyson. We're currently living in a smaller, mostly carpeted apartment with no pets. My daughter and I have allergies. What do you think would be the best model or is Dyson all hype? $1000 vacuums are not in our budget.

I tried the search option and I only saw threads from 2006 and earlier about vacuums. If there is a current one I'd love to be directed there. :)

We have the Dyson upright for animal hair, with the ball for swiveling. It might be the DC25.

The feature that I like the most is the extendable wand. It has a fantastic reach. It's great for getting under furniture, or on top of doors and up to crown molding and ceiling corners. I looked at other brands but didn't see anything similar.

Eureka BOSS SmartVac positions itself as being better than the Dyson and for substantially less money.

I've never had a Dyson, so I can't compare the two. However, my SmartVac kicks the butt of every single other vacuum cleaner I've ever used in 33 years. To the point that my DH and I still sometimes go "wow" after using it, and we've had it for years. I can't remember how much we paid for it, but we bought it off the shelf at WalMart and it wasn't even the most expensive model there. I think it was less than $150, maybe even $120.

For example, we have this rug on our front porch - and we live in New England. Imagine how much dirt, salt, grime gets tracked in especially in the winter. And we do not baby the rug - it gets vacuumed maybe 4 times a year. But when it does - whoo! Just about as good as new. (The "just about" refers to a couple of minor stains, which no vacuum on earth could touch).

i got a bissel healthy home vacuum a few months ago and im completely in love with it. We have 3 dogs though. It is amazing on the dog hair but i also can just feel a big difference in the pollen allergy stuff, dust. It's so easy to vacuum with it's just great. It was around 200$ I think w hich was a lot for us. I actually went and got it at target thinking i would just use it once or twice and return it and I just couldnt return it :)

We've been vacuum shopping to replace dh's eureka from college. We settled on the dc 14. I was not impressed. The pick up didn't seem to be much better than our old eureka.

We ended up returning it and going with the bissel prolite, and I'm so in love. It sucks an embarrassing amount of dust and dirt out of my carpet. For the first time, I I will admit that my love for the prolite may be heavily influence by the fact that I'm pregnant and have a 1 year old that eats crap off the floor.

just a compare and contrast...

The dyson doesn't fit under anything. Floor boards, beds, even the dining room chairs. The prolite, although the bottom looks less spaceshipy, fits under all those things.

You have to unwrap the cord for the Dyson, and preform this samurai move to 'unsheathe' the hose for attachments. This means you have to unwrap/re wrap the cords, or just leave them in a pile on the floor. The prolite's hose comes out from the front. I also like to vacuum out my son's high chair pretty often, but hate wrapping and unwrapping the cord. I know this doesn't sound like big deal, but with the dyson, you need to use the attachment to clean under baseboards, because of problem number one.

The dyson has a long cord that wraps from the floor to the top of the vacuum. The prolite has a shorter cord, true, but you can wrap it without bending over.

The prolite is lighter than the dyson and easier to push.
the prolite auto adjusts for rugs and carpet. The manual adjust for the dyson is guess where? on the bottom so you have to bend down.

The prolite is louder, and not as neat looking as the dyson. But it's half the price. I've had it only for a few weeks, but I really like it so far. At 150$'s, I'd buy one every year until my kids were at a stage where I could vacuum weekly.

You have to unwrap the cord for the Dyson, and preform this samurai move to 'unsheathe' the hose for attachments. This means you have to unwrap/re wrap the cords, or just leave them in a pile on the floor. The prolite's hose comes out from the front. I also like to vacuum out my son's high chair pretty often, but hate wrapping and unwrapping the cord. I know this doesn't sound like big deal, but with the dyson, you need to use the attachment to clean under baseboards, because of problem number one.

The cord wrapped so that it prevents removing the hose is an irritating feature of the Dyson, I agree. I once had an upright vacuum with a retractable cord and it was a terrific feature. I can't recall the manufacturer. I couldn't recommend it anyway, because the vacuum had no suction and did a terrible job. That rectractable cord was great though. When we got the Dyson, I wondered why this wasn't a feature, since there was so much thought put into everything else, like the easy clean-up of the bagless container and the filter.

Quote:

Originally Posted by texmati

The dyson doesn't fit under anything. Floor boards, beds, even the dining room chairs. The prolite, although the bottom looks less spaceshipy, fits under all those things.

True, but if you use the hose on the Dyson, it has an incredible reach under furniture, unlike most vacuums, as well as reaching high up. When we lived in house with very high ceilings and a cathedral ceiling in one room, there was nothing I could find to match the reach of the Dyson.

Quote:

Originally Posted by texmati

the prolite auto adjusts for rugs and carpet. The manual adjust for the dyson is guess where? on the bottom so you have to bend down.

This must depend on the model. The button adjust on our Dyson in on top, near the handle.

We have a Dyson Animal, and I like it. I will agree with the annoying placement/procedure for using the hose- there are times when I just want to got one little chunk of something off the floor, and I don't need that gigantically long hose arm. But the length is nice for dusting the ceiling.

Our floor/carpet adjustment is on the bottom, but it's shaped so that you can use your foot to adjust it.

I didn't really notice a difference in suction until I tried to vacuum an area rug. You can't. The suction is so strong that it stops the belt (because it's pulling the whole rug up to the vacuum) and you get the horrible "belt stuck" noise. So I have to use attachments to clean my area rug (which makes the long hose come in handy.)

My all-time FAVORITE thing about the Dyson is how easy it is to fix IF you get a clog. Every single little piece comes off just with a button- no screwdrivers needed! And they're small enough pieces so that you can see exactly where the clog is and get it out. That part of the design is brilliant. I also like that it came with a TON of attachments.

Mom to DD1 (10/07) and DD2 (3/11) I blog about our life with food allergies and eosinophilic disorders.

We actually just bought a Dyson DC25 Animal over the weekend. This was after about 6 months of research and secretly wanting the Dyson since I first saw the "ball" commercial. Several stores had the price greatly reduced over Thanksgiving weekend, for $399. I'm not sure if those were Black Friday prices, but it seemed to be a good price. So, we ended up going to our local Lowe's store to get one and it rang up for $279. I'm pretty sure it was an error in their system, but the reciept showed the model that we purchased, so I am not sure what the deal was.

That said, we have been very happy with it so far. We have a mix of carpet and hardwood (mostly carpet) and 2 dogs (and 2 messy boys). The Dyson picked up a TON of dirt and hair. And this was after I had vacuumed the previous day with our old vacuum (a Hoover WindTunnel that we were happy with). Literally, this vacuum pulled up half of a black garbage bag of dirt. It also made the room smell nice (or at least it didn't "smell" like the old vacuum did when we used it).

I used the wand attachment for our stairs. I had read that the wand was difficult to extend and, while the hose was definitely tight, I didn't have a problem on the stairs. I loved that you could just extend the wand from the handle.

I don't have a problem with the cord and the way it wraps up. It's actually almost identical to how the WindTunnel worked. I found the Dyson easy to maneuver and, while it didn't reach under all of the furniture, it was basically the same as the WindTunnel.

In the end, I am glad we made the purchase. Honestly, though, I am not sure that I would have purchased it had it been full price. Some of the less expensive vacuums have very good reviews so I probably would have gone with one of them rather than spend almost $550 on the Dyson.

PS. now my husband wants to buy a Dyson handheld for Christmas. He was sold on it after he saw how much dirt this one picked up.

I have a Dyson canister-type vac. Bought on sale refurbished through Amazon (~$200). Love it! LOVE. I love that there are no bags to remember to buy and replace, I love that it's easy to see where any clog is and to fix it, I love the suction power. It's awesome. The cord on this one retracts inside the vacuum body with the touch of a button, which is very handy. Basically, it's a dream come true. I just need to motivate to vacuum everyday.